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Wednesday, July 17, 2013

A 7/2/2013 letter signed by Shelly Gehshan of the Pew Foundation to The Dalles, Oregon, Mayor and City Council contains many falsehoods. The most egregious is her dismissal of Harvard research
showing a link between fluoride and lower IQ. Gehshan wrote the
following:

“anti-fluoride groups claim that fluoride causes lower
IQ scores in children, but many of the studies they cite were from areas in
China, Mongolia and Iran in which the natural fluoride levels were at least four
or five times higher than the level used to fluoridate water in The Dalles. One
study including fluoride levels that reached as high as 11.5 milligrams per
liter – a concentration that is roughly 10 times higher than the level that is
used to fluoridate American communities. In addition, the Harvard researchers
who examined these IQ studies found that each of the studies “had deficiencies,
in some cases rather serious, which limit the conclusions that can be drawn.” 17
Furthermore, the Harvard researchers publicly distanced themselves from the way
that anti-fluoride groups were misrepresenting these IQ studies.18
Anti-fluoride groups also ignore historical evidence that undermines their claim
– between the 1940s and the 1990s, the average IQ scores of Americans improved
15 points while fluoridation steadily expanded to serve millions of additional
people 19.”

When Gehshan writes, “the Harvard
researchers (Grandjean et. al) publicly distanced themselves from the way that
anti-fluoride groups were misrepresenting these IQ studies,” she uses an
error-laden Wichita KS newspaper article as a reference which some believe was
ghost-written by Pew’s fluoridation Public Relations employee.

The truth is that Harvard
scientist, Philippe Grandjean, MD,
states the newspaper never "checked
their information with the authors, even though statements were attributed to
them."

Dr. Philippe Grandjean, the senior scientist
on the Harvard team, criticized the Wichita paper for deceptively attributing
its own conclusions on fluoridation to the Harvard scientists. Fluoridation's
potential to produce "chemical brain drain," Grandjean writes, is an issue that
"definitely deserves concern."Grandjean also takes objection to the Wichita
paper's claim that the Harvard review only looked at studies that used "very
high levels of fluoride." The Wichita paper conveyed this impression by focusing
on a single, cherry-picked study (Hu 1989) that was never published, nor even
included in the Harvard review.The truth, Grandjean writes, is that "only 4
of 27 studies" in the Harvard review used the high levels that the Wichita paper
described, and "clear differences" in IQ "were found at much lower
exposures."

Vested interests
caused decades to pass before children were protected from the brain-damaging
effects of lead exposure reported in the literature. We unnecessarily lost a
generation to lead-induced brain damage, reports Grandjean.

When Grandjean’s research team
published a careful review of studies (meta-analysis) linking fluoride to children’s lower
IQ,
worried fluoridation promoters and regulators immediately and incorrectly
claimed that only excessive exposures are toxic, the effect is insignificant,
decades of fluoridation would have revealed brain deficits (although nobody
looked, yet), and that it was probably lead and arsenic that lowered IQ, not
fluoride. Example here

“When such a misleading fuselage is aimed at the
authors of a careful meta-analysis of 27 different studies, what would it take
to convince critics like that,” asks Grandjean.

Thirty-seven human studies now link fluoride to
children's lowered IQ, some at levels considered safe in the US. See:
http://www.fluoridealert.org/articles/iq-facts/ and that no research on fluoride’s human brain effects have ever
been conducted in the US